Conservative gymnastics on human rights are continuing with Theresa May announcing that the party’s next manifesto would promise to scrap the Human Rights Act.
She unveiled a raft of new measures to stop ‘migrants’ avoiding deportation on human rights grounds, saying “if leaving the European Convention is what it takes to fix our human rights laws, that is what we should do”.
This rhetoric comes from the same Conservative-led government that last week used ‘right to privacy’ of personal data, which is also part of the Convention, when it filed a case at the European Court of Justice against the threatened cap to bankers’ bonuses.
But human rights do not apply when it comes to the privacy of more than seven million trade union members whose names, addresses and personal correspondence it wants powers to access through the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill currently being rushed through Parliament.
This glaring inconsistency on human rights policy is part and parcel of a government that unashamedly picks and chooses as and when the Human Rights Act suits their purpose.
The government needs to explain why it thinks the right to privacy, which is also part of the Convention, should be unqualified in the case of bankers and over-ridden for trade unionists.
Part 3 of the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill gives the government’s Certification Officer – and potentially his staff and contractors – scope to require unions to hand over membership records and private correspondence.
This legislation is being rushed through Parliament after a cursory consultation over the summer. If the bill goes through, state personnel and contractors will have the power to access the personal information of more than seven million union members.
The Bill has come from business secretary Vince Cable’s department, displaying a shocking lack of liberalism from a Liberal Democrat minister – and a complete disregard for internationally recognised privacy and trade union rights.
Unions already submit annual membership returns to the government’s Certification Officer (CO). For years, it’s been open and transparent, giving union members the right to check the records and complain to the CO if something is wrong – and no one has since 2004.
Under this Bill, the government wants to intrude much further by:
· Requiring unions with more than 10,000 members to appoint an Assurer from among ‘qualified independent persons’ as named or defined by the Government
· Requiring unions to submit an annual ‘Membership Audit Certificate’ (prepared, in the case of those with more than 10,000 members, by an Assurer)
· Giving the Assurer the right to access membership records and require union officers to provide information.
· Giving the CO and CO staff and CO inspectors and Assurers powers to require production of documents and to make copies of them, including individual membership records and private correspondence from ‘anyone who appears to be in possession of them’ if there is ‘good reason to do so’.
The TUC has said: “It is not the business of the State to know who is or who is not a trade union member, and where they live”.
But the government is invoking article 8(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to over-ride data protection laws, which by implication, suggests trade unions are a threat to ‘the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.’
If we needed any more evidence of this being a government for the few and not the many, this could hardly make it clearer.
The sheer arrogance of the Coalition’s use and abuse of the European Convention on Human Rights is breathtaking. In her speech this week Theresa May’s brazen hypocrisy was clear, she might as well have said: “Do as we say and not as we do”.
* Richard Arthur is National Coordinator Trade Union Law for Thompsons Solicitors
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